


i don’t want your secrets

by underthestars320



Category: Space Force (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, its the angela and tony frenemy dynamic, mostly from angela’s pov but its still chantony, theres a little bit of angst but its mostly fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28664745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underthestars320/pseuds/underthestars320
Summary: Tony tells Angela how he feels about Chan
Relationships: Angela Ali & Chan Kaifang, Angela Ali & Chan Kaifang & F. Tony Scarapiducci, Angela Ali & F. Tony Scarapiducci, Chan Kaifang/F. Tony Scarapiducci
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	i don’t want your secrets

Angela and Chan ate lunch together every day. Sometimes they’d just sit in silence, eating their food and enjoying each other’s company; sometimes one of them would listen while the other talked; most of the time they complained about the people they worked with. Whenever Naird did something annoying (or wildly offensive) they would just have to wait until lunch to get all their anger out. Angela complained about Tony sometimes, but Chan never had anything to add about him.

“Hey, you two,” Tony had walked into the cafeteria and set his hands on the table where Chan and Angela were sitting, leaning down a bit to talk to them, “Captain Ali, Angela, Angie, can I borrow you for a minute?”

“What do you want, Tony?” Angela looked across the table at Chan, rolling her eyes but only receiving a small shrug in response.

“Can I please just talk to you in private? Oh, by the way Chan, I love your—uh—” he snapped and made a vague gesture with his hand, trying to remember the word he was thinking of, “Pens! I love the pens.”

“Oh, thanks, I think. They’re new,” Chan looked down at the pens in the pocket of his lab coat, adjusting them a bit while Angela got up and was dragged away by Tony.

“Okay, I know we’re not close or anything,” Angela didn’t respond, just raising an eyebrow and continuing to glare at him, “Yeah, I mean, you have not been subtle about how much you hate me. I’m pretty sure last week you told me to my—”

“Tony, would you just get on with it?” She wasn’t disagreeing with him, and she made that clear, but she also didn’t want to listen to him talk about how much she dislikes him.

“Right, so I have this teeny tiny issue, and I can’t really talk to anyone about it; I feel like I’m going to explode or something and you were the only person I could think of to tell,” he barely paused to take a breath and quickly look back at the cafeteria, “I really like Chan.”

“Yeah, who doesn’t like Chan?”

“No, I mean I really like Chan.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” Angela stared at him, shocked, “Why would you tell me that?”

“I couldn’t think of anyone else to tell!”

“How the hell am I going to keep this from him? He’s my friend.”

“I don’t know, lie?” Tony instantly regretted saying that.

“You fucking idiot!” Angela punched him (somewhat) lightly on the arm between each word, “I hate lying to him. Why would you make me lie to him?”

“Okay, can we just pause for a moment and appreciate the fact that you instantly decided that you wouldn’t tell him?” Angela did not look like she wanted to pause and appreciate it, but Tony kept going, “I mean, you say you hate me but you’re willing to lie to your only friend for me? That’s sweet.”

“First of all, fuck you, Chan isn’t my only friend,” Tony shrugged, and Angela punched his arm again, “Second of all, unlike you, I have this wonderful thing called a moral compass—”

“Okay, fuck you?”

“Let me finish: I actually have morals, so I’m not going to tell Chan your private information.”

“Oh wow, that’s actually great, thank you.”

“Still not done. The second you do something wrong, I might just mysteriously lose that moral compass,” Tony’s eyes widened a bit, “And you will seriously regret it.”

*

“What am I supposed to do about this?” Tony was in his apartment after work, talking to Angela over the phone.

“I don’t know, Tony, and I don’t why you’ve just assumed that I’ll help you with this,” Angela responded, still driving home from work, “I said I wouldn’t tell Chan about it, I didn’t say that I would help you.”

“Listen, Chan’s my friend too, I don’t want to fuck this up and you don’t want me to either, so why not help me?”

Angela opened her mouth to tell him no, but she paused before the words came out. She didn’t like Tony, that wasn’t really a secret. She thought he was annoying, and full of himself, and probably one of the least trustworthy people she’d ever met. She wasn’t sure if she believed him when he said he cared about Chan, and after the few interactions they’d had she wasn’t sure if he was capable of feeling that way about anyone other than himself, but she knew he wouldn’t leave her alone if she didn’t help him. Besides, Chan had never mentioned having feelings for Tony, so at the very least, she could just clear things up there, tell Tony he didn’t feel the same way, and move on with her life without having to worry about Tony’s crush on her friend.

“You know what? Fine.”

*  
“So—uh—you know Tony?”

“Yeah, of course I know Tony, I literally talked to him 10 minutes ago,” Chan and Angela were at lunch the next day, with Angela awkwardly trying to see how he felt about Tony, “You’re being weird. Why are you being weird?”

“I am not being weird!”

“You’re being so weird.”

“I was just asking what you think about Tony,” Angela said, raising her hands defensively, “Nothing weird about that.”

“I think he’s cool,” Chan shrugged, picking up a french fry out of the neat stack he had arranged all of his into, “He’s fun to be around, you know? He’s just got a good energy.”

“A good energy?” That wasn’t necessarily the answer Angela had wanted.

“Yeah, energy,” Chan responded matter-of-factly, “I know you kind of hate him, but maybe you should hang out with him more, I think you really might like him.”

“Hang out with him more? Jesus, next thing you know you’ll be inviting him to Friday movie nights.”

“Well…” Chan trailed off.

“No. No. Friday movie nights are a sacred tradition!”

“We’ve known each other for 2 months, we can’t really have ‘traditions.’”

“Sacred tradition!” Clearly, the conversation wasn’t exactly going how Angela had hoped.

“Okay, whatever, it’s a sacred tradition,” Chan laughed a bit, “Maybe we could just all get lunch together or go for a hike or something. I really think you guys would get along.”

“Have you met Tony? He wouldn’t last 10 minutes on a hike.”

*

Somehow, despite how much she argued against it, Angela found herself sitting in the passenger seat of her truck with Chan driving and Tony in the back seat, on their way to a hiking trail an hour away from Space Force Headquarters.

Apparently, Tony had taken “you wouldn’t last 10 minutes” as a challenge, so now she was in the car listening to Chan talk about the floral diversity of the region while Tony gave him heart eyes from the back of the truck.

“Alright this should be it,” Chan said, parking the car and unbuckling his seatbelt, “Tony, start your 10-minute timer.”

“Don’t you dare start that timer.”

“Too late.”

The first 10 minutes of the hike mainly consisted of Angela telling Tony that it was okay for him to give up, and the next 5 were mostly Tony boasting about making it more than 10 minutes. After that, though, they mellowed out. Chan would point out different plants and tell them the scientific names, Tony and Angela would make jokes (mostly puns) about the names, and Angela would make fun of Tony for checking his phone every few minutes even though there was no service.

“You’re too reliant on your phone,” she said, “Maybe just put it in your pocket and don’t look at it for a bit.”

“I am not reliant on it, I just enjoy being able to benefit from technological advancement.”

“That’s it; that’s the last straw,” Angela stopped walking, Chan and Tony did as well, “Chan, take his phone.”

“On it.”

“What the—” Chan and Angela both tried to grab Tony’s phone at the same time, causing him to yelp a bit and reach his arm up above his head, “Hah, neither of you can reach it now,” Chan gave up, but Angela jumped a bit and took the phone out of his hand, “Okay, that’s just not fair. This is a violation of human rights.”

“Stop whining and hike,” Chan said, taking the phone from Angela and putting it in his bag, “Enjoy the fresh air or something.”

About halfway through the trail, Angela tripped and twisted her ankle, but they didn’t want to turn around until Chan could find some extremely rare plant that he had read about on a certain part of the trail, which led to her having to hold onto Tony’s shoulder while she walked for the rest of the way.

“Okay, it should be just over that hill,” Chan said, pointing to an incline ahead of them.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to get up there,” Angela said, gesturing to her ankle.

“Well, do you want to wait here while I go look?” Angela nodded, so Chan turned to Tony, “Are you coming?”

“Oh, no I think I’ll wait here, make sure she doesn’t fall over or something,” Tony barely dodged another punch to his arm from Angela, “Take pictures for me?”

“Great, I’ll use your phone then,” Chan started walking towards the hill, pulling Tony’s phone from his bag.

“I have limited storage space!” Tony called after him, but he wasn’t listening.

“Dude, why are you staying here?” Angela asked, “Isn’t the whole point of this for you to get closer to Chan?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to thank you, jeez.”

“What is there to thank me for?” Angela asked, looking at him with a confused expression, “I’m not the one who invited you, Chan did.”

“No, I know, and that’s great,” Tony looked off in the direction of the hill, “I just mean that I wanted to thank you for all of this, you really have no idea how much it means to me that you’re helping me.”

“Well, you’re welcome, I guess.”

“Seriously, Chan and I were friends before, but I barely knew him. I would get to talk to him for a few minutes whenever I could, or I’d have to find a way to be in whatever room he was in even if that just meant listening to him talk about science shit with Mallory, but now you’re actually helping me get to know him. I mean, I usually just admire people from a distance, because the closer you get to someone, the more you disappoint each other, but it’s different with him now,” he paused, looking back at Angela with a shrug, “I know that it’s different, and I wouldn’t know it if you hadn’t helped me.”

Angela just looked at him, confused and a little shocked. The whole time she’d known Tony, she considered him to just be shallow and self-centered, but what he just told her made him seem completely different. She considered telling him that, but she didn’t, “I think he really likes you,” she said instead, “I’m rooting for you two.”

Chan got back (he had taken about 200 photos, but Tony didn’t need to know that until later) and they headed back down the trail, with Angela holding onto both of their shoulders because she was afraid of falling downhill. On the car ride back, Tony insisted on taking the passenger seat because he said Angela needed to “elevate her ankle or something,” and he of course decided that they needed to listen to music. He apparently listens to a wide variety of music genres, and sang every song word-for-word at the top of his lungs. Chan sang along on the ones he knew, and Angela sat in the back “elevating her ankle” and not letting herself be surprised at how much fun they were all having.

*

After that hike, Tony started spending more time with both of them, and he spent a lot more time yelling over the phone to Angela about how amazing he thought Chan was. He still hadn’t been invited to a Friday movie night, but when Chan brought it up, Angela didn’t fully oppose the idea. Everything seemed like it was going pretty well for them, until it wasn’t.

“Angela!” Chan sat down across from Angela at a table in the cafeteria, “I’m really sorry, I have to skip movie night tonight.”

“Wait, why?”

“I have a date!”

“What? With who?” Angela asked, trying a little too hard to sound surprised and mentally making a note to slap Tony later for not telling her before he asked Chan out.

“That guy Jason that you met in the lab last week,” Angela was about to congratulate him when she realized what he said, she opened her mouth but nothing came out, so Chan continued, “You know, Dr. Howard?”

“Yeah, no I remember him,” she could barely focus on what she was saying, still trying to process that it wasn’t Tony, “I’m really happy for you, dude.”

Part of her was happy for him, because why wouldn’t she be happy that her friend was going on a date? But she could only think one thing, How the hell am I supposed to tell Tony?

*

About 90% of the time that Tony Scarapiducci was in public, he was smiling. It was something that annoyed Angela at first, but she was beginning to appreciate his optimism, and seeing him smile was somewhat comforting to her considering what she was about to tell him.

“Angie!” He said when Angela walked into his office, “What can I do ya for?”

“Jesus Christ, I thought I told you to stop saying that.”

“Nothing can stop me,” he said jokingly, kicking his feet up onto his desk, “Seriously though, what’re you doing here?”

“I was…” she trailed off, trying to think of how she wanted to say it, “I was wondering if you wanted to have a movie night. Tonight, at your place because mine’s a mess.”

“Oh, really? Yeah that’d be awesome,” Tony took his feet off the desk and sat up, seeming a bit surprised at the invitation, “Fair warning though, if it’s at my place, we will only be watching Star Wars and Mamma Mia. Maybe The Notebook if we have time.” 

Angela almost argued with him, but she couldn’t, “Well, it’s the host’s choice, I guess.”

“Is it just me and you or is Chan coming?”

“Well Friday movie nights are kind of me and Chan’s thing, but he ditched me, so it’s just us,” she paused and looked down at her feet so she didn’t have to make eye contact with him, “He—uh—has a date.”

“Oh,” was all Tony said. He slouched a bit in his chair, staring off to the side a bit. Angela had spent enough time with him to know that whenever he didn’t have something to say, something was wrong. His eyes looked blank, and he wasn’t moving except for one finger on his right hand that was rapidly tapping against his leg, and the smile had been wiped from his face.

*

Friday movie night at Tony’s apartment wasn’t too different from how it usually was with just Chan and Angela, aside from the fact that she could see Tony crying at least every 20 minutes. He didn’t want to talk about it, though, so she let him cry by himself, and she got up and danced with him to all the songs in Mamma Mia, and she didn’t make him pause the movie when she got a call from Chan halfway through The Empire Strikes Back (they didn’t watch A New Hope first because she limited him to one Star Wars movie and he wanted to see Lando Calrissian).

“Hey Tony?” Angela said, walking back into the room after the phone call.

“Yeah, what’s up?” He tried (not very subtly) to wipe his eyes.

“I have to go, Chan needs a ride home. I’ll be back once I drop him off, okay?”

“Oh yeah, that’s fine,” he smiled at her, “More popcorn for me, I guess.”

Angela smiled at him weakly and grabbed her keys off the counter, waving at him before she left even though he had already turned his full attention back to the movie. Chan had given her the address for the restaurant and it was about 10 minutes away, so she put an album that he liked on shuffle and started driving. Part of her wanted to take him to Tony’s for movie night once she picked him up, because something had obviously gone wrong in the date if he wanted to be picked up less than an hour after it started, but she couldn’t do that to Tony.

When she got to the restaurant, Chan was already outside, so he just got in the car and they sat in silence for a few minutes while the music played.

“So…”

“So.”

“Are you going to tell me why you called me in the middle of your date asking me to pick you up?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Chan looked down at his feet, “It’s just a long story, you know?”

“I’ll take a detour then,” Angela replied, changing the settings on Google Maps, “You’ve got plenty of time.”

“Well I was on the date and we were talking and all that, but it just didn’t feel right, you know? The whole time I just felt like there was somewhere else I was supposed to be,” he started, “I don’t know, Jason seems like a great guy, just not for me. The whole time he was talking I was mostly just thinking about how you guys were having your movie night. By the way, kind of a dick move to invite Tony on the one night I have to miss, but that’s not the point. The point is, the whole time this poor guy was trying to talk to me, I was thinking about Tony. I was thinking about watching Star Wars with him, and how he probably knew every lyric and line in Mamma Mia, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. I think I have feelings for Tony.”

“Kaifang Chan, I swear to God, that was the shortest fucking story I’ve ever heard; I didn’t even need to take that detour.”

*

Angela sat outside of Tony’s apartment building in her car for a bit before going back in once she had taken Chan home. She had been thinking over and debating how to deal with the situation since Chan had told her how he felt about Tony, and she couldn’t go back into the apartment without a solid idea of how she was going to go about this.

“Hey, Scarapiducci, I’m back,” the door was still unlocked, since apparently he hadn’t locked it behind her when she left, and she found him curled up on the floor in a ball with a blanket over him, sniffling while Han Solo was being encased in carbonite, “Yeah this makes sense,” she said under her breath.

“Hey Angie,” he said, sitting up quickly, “Is—uh—is Chan okay?”

“Yeah he’s fine,” she walked over to where he was and sat down next to him on the floor, grabbing a handful of popcorn, “I actually wanted to talk to you about...all of that.”

“Feel free,” his voice faltered a bit, but he was still smiling.

“I think you should tell him how you feel.”

“Well, that was definitely not what I was expecting, Jesus Christ,” he looked at her, completely confused, “Why would I tell him how I feel right after he went on a date? Obviously he doesn’t feel the same way if he went out with someone else.”

“What the hell have you got to lose?”

*

As it turns out, Tony didn’t lose anything by telling Chan how he felt. In fact, he gained much more than he lost. It was no surprise to Angela when they started dating, and no surprise to her when they moved in together. She was, however, surprised to get a phone call from Tony while she was eating lunch with Chan in a town near Wild Horse, almost exactly 2 years after Tony had pulled her out of the cafeteria to tell her how he felt about Chan.

“Tony what do you want? I literally saw you 20 minutes ago when I picked Chan up for lunch.”

“Are you at the table with him still or did you go outside to answer the phone?”

“I’m outside, that’s just basic common courtesy,” Angela said, “I’m the one with morals here, remem—”

“I want to propose to Chan,” Tony cut her off as he was struggling to hold back his laughter, knowing exactly what he was doing by telling her this.

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” Angela couldn’t believe he had done this again, and Tony knew by the tone of her voice that if they weren’t talking over the phone, she would have punched him, “Why would you tell me that?”

“I couldn’t think of anyone else that I would want to tell.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed the fic!! it’s yet another idea that i came up with late at night lol follow me on twitter @trxymiller :) love ya


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